


Dreaming

by bodhirookandor



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Force-Sensitive Bodhi, Force-Sensitive Finn, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-12-12 16:52:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11741208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bodhirookandor/pseuds/bodhirookandor
Summary: He’s seven when he begins dreaming. Seven when he sees his father killed and his hears his mother crying. He tries to tell them, someone, anyone. Tries to let them know that someone is coming. That they don’t care for their way of life. That they’d ruin them all.





	Dreaming

**Author's Note:**

> This is for my good friend Kaadhu! I hope you like this!
> 
> You can find me @luminousbodhi on tumblr!

He’s seven when he begins  _dreaming_. Seven when he  _sees_  his father killed and his  _hears_  his mother crying. He tries to tell them, someone, anyone. Tries to let them know that someone is coming. That they don’t care for their way of life. That they’d ruin them all.

He tries and tries. But no one believes him; their smiles turned up in amusement at his “imagination.”

Bodhi’s seven when he begins dreaming. They come, the subjects of his nightmares, the soulless wraiths that stalk his every waking hour, when he’s nine. Barely old enough to start helping his father at the shop. They come, slick and empty smiles that hide the rotting corpse underneath.

They come.

“This planet,” they tell them, apathy seeping into their very eyes, “is now under the Empire.” They say, eyes daring anyone to disagree.

Bodhi closes his eyes in defeat, hand holding tightly onto his mother, when his father rises.

* * *

He’s ten when his father is killed. Ten and holding onto his sister for dear life as his father is put onto the podium and meant to answer for his crimes. Bodhi looks at him,  _really_  looks at the man that is his father and watches with his eyes wide open as they shoot him in the back. 

He thinks he’s dreaming. He wants to be. 

His sister sobs into his chest the minute the crowd clears out; his mother places a shaky hand on his shoulder.

And Bodhi? Bodhi feels nothing more than rage shimmer deep into his veins. 

The ground swallows up the podium, responding to his anger, his rage. It rips the podium apart, wood and steel broken beneath its onslaught. 

His mother’s breath hitches and Bodhi turns and meets her terrified gaze with his own angry one.

They never speak of it again. 

* * *

He  _dreams_  a lot. Too much.  _Dreams_ of his sister’s wedding, his mother’s retirement.  _Dreams_  of starvation, of dying in the street with no one ever lending a hand to help.

He’s 15 when he makes his decision. 15 when he decides to race with every thing he has. 15 when he discovers his love of flying.

It takes his breath away, grabs him by the shoulders and lets him loose among the bright sky. He can pretend his one of them, pretend he’s nothing more than a bird, meant to live and die in the air.

He pretends and pretends, bringing home enough money to stave off starvation and refusing to answer his sister’s questions.

It works. It works. It works.

But then he  _dreams_ again and he realizes how naive he’d truly been.

* * *

Silence had swallowed up his home the minute his father died. Now no one dares to utter a word, afraid to break the fragile peace among each other. His mother is still terrified of him, terrified of what he can do. Bodhi can tell. Can tell by the hushed whispers that come from her room, the quiet pleas she cries into her misbaha in order to save his soul.

Bodhi wonders if he’s damned. Wonders if they all are.

Still. He  _dreams_.

* * *

He  _sees_  them before they come and climbs up his roof to watch their journey to his home, lets the rising sun guide his path.

They come with their slick smiles and their dead eyes. Come with their propositions and their threats. The come and come and come until.

“You either work for us, or you die.” And one of them levels a blaster at his sister’s head and Bodhi knows. He knows he can’t take that lying down. He rises, hand stretched out, ready to throw them out of his home, his world, his  _life._ Ready to hurt them like they hurt him and  _everyone_ and-

His mother places a trembling hand on his shoulder, her quiet reprimand slicing through his rage. He turns to her, sees her wide eyes and shaking mouth and swallows.

“Don’t,” she whispers. And Bodhi understands.

“I’ll go with you. Just...just leave my family alone.” His sister shouts and his mother’s shaking gets worse but Bodhi grits his teeth and does nothing but watch the slowly widening smile of the devil’s puppets before him.

“Excellent,” they whisper, handing him three sets of uniforms. He burns one.

* * *

It’s silent the day he leaves. Except its a different kind of silence. It’s charged, angry and defeated and Bodhi wants to scream if only to end it. He hugs his sister to his chest, pressing a kiss to her forehead, trying and failing to calm the rapid beating of his heart.

He wants to stay. He wants to run. Wants to take his family and run away like he’d always dreamed. Take them far away from this place and save them the way he’d want to be saved.

He wants and he  _dreams_  and it’s all for naught anyhow.

His mother is the one that does though, hands shaking (they’re always shaking, why are they always shaking?) as she holds out a pair of goggles to him.

“It was your grandmother’s,” she whispers to his unanswered question, “she used to wear it around all the time.” And Bodhi takes the goggles, suddenly feeling as though he can’t breathe. They stand together in that moment, mother and son. Son and mother. And smile.

“Thank you,” Bodhi whispers, a thousand emotions wrapped around that one phrase, “ _thank you.”_

HIs mother hands something else to him, closing his hand into a fist when he goes to look.

“Keep this on you too. A piece of Jedha, wherever you go.” She hugs him then, tight and hard like he imagines her hugs to be. How long had it been since she held him like this? How long had it been since she wrapped her arms around him and whispered assurances?

Later, alone in his bunk, Bodhi would open his fist and see a lapel pin. He’d trace over it, touching the wolf carved into metal and breathing in the words etched into every Jedhan’s heart.

_Glowing Like the Moon, Passionate Like the Sun_

He’d cry for the first and last time for years to come.

* * *

Silence follows him, a loyal dog. A loyal soldier. Silence follows him. A death march, licking his heels and ripping into him night after night. Silence follows him. A quiet madness that touches on his psyche and refuses to go away. Silence follows him.

He  _dreams_  and  _dreams_  and  _dreams_. Drowns under his terror, of things to come and things that will be and things that are and things that have been. He wants to scream out to the galaxy, ask it to take back everything but nothing answers him.  _It_  still fills his veins, croons in his ear and fills the space around him with the sound of the waterfall. He  _dreams_ and  _dreams_  and  _dreams_.

And Bodhi wants it all to end.

* * *

“We did this Bodhi. You and I. We helped build this,” Galen Erso whispers to him with voice as sweet as any honey. The words twist into him, meant to hurt and anger, meant to incite the rage that lives deep within his heart.

Bodhi knows what Erso’s doing, can  _hear_  the tainted words marring the honey suckle of Erso’s voice. He can  _taste_  the lies. The deception. The manipulation. Still, he lets him continue; guilt and anger and rage and despair clouding his senses.

“You ripped up Jedha. You took away part of it to feed to this  _monster_. I helped build it. It’s as part of your home as you are, Bodhi.” And the words find their target, rip him open and see him for the terrified child that he really is.

“You know what you have to do.” Erso whispers, truth spilling from every fourth syllable. The words are toxic and numbing and painful and terrible and true and...and...and...

Bodhi takes the device, turns and leaves. Only when he is on his ship, away from anyone but the cold deep recess of his space, does he scream. Harsh and angry, terrified and grief stricken. He screams, his only witness the galaxy around him.

He screams and a part of him that’s broken, ripped in two and knowing he’s going to die. Cries.

* * *

_What would it be like? To be free._

He’s there but not there. An empty husk of a man that had too many dreams and too many excuses and too much  _hope_.

 _Rebellions are built on hope_.

He’s falling. Or maybe he’s floating or maybe he’s nothing and everything. A man ripped in two by men much stronger than he. A man who’d had his fears spelled out in front of another. A man who tried to save the world but got tortured for his troubles.

Who is he?

He wants to scream and cry. Shout and cajole. Threaten and despair. He wants. Wants.

_Hello? I don’t know if anyone can hear this, but all I want is to find a friend...Please won’t someone answer?_

He wants to open his mouth but he’s falling, a body with an anchor, drowning under its own despair and  _something_ else. He’s there. But not there. Time spilling out in front of him like the sea. He’s gone. But not.

 _I...I just want to talk to someone. Anyone. The others...They have each other. I’m just alone_.

He opens his mouth and nothing but mumbles escape him, quiet hisses of “I’m the pilot. I defected, I defected; I defected.” He wants to cry. But for what purpose?

He’s drowning and clawing and screaming with his mouth closed and yelling and pleading and chanting and...and...and..

_Are you the pilot?_

A question that rings in his ears, there but not there. Filtering through his head and ringing like a doorbell.

_Are you the pilot?_

He grasps the voice like a lifeline, pulling himself up and out. Breaking free from the gaps, rising above the thing that had kept himself trapped and opening his eyes to see beautiful brown eyes regarding his own.

“Are you the pilot?” The man asks, desperate and angry, awed and hushed.

“Yes,” Bodhi whispers, a broken sob of a man that had seen too much. “Yes.”

* * *

He stares at the lapel in his hand as NiJedha falls to ruin behind him. Stares at the words etched into it and almost weeps. He mouths the words, quietly to himself and imagines his mother and sister on the ship with him. He wants to hold them for one last time, wants to press them close to his chest and whisper that everything would be fine. That he’d be there.

He wasn’t there though and they were eviscerated along with the rest of his home.

Something in him wails, a quiet storm that refuses to settle and Bodhi wonders if this is what it’ll always feel like. To be cut off, destroyed and left to rot. He wonders and he wonders and all he wants is to sit back on his roof and feel the Jedhan sun on his face.

Rage, an ever present companion, warms his veins and Bodhi closes his eyes and presses a kiss to the pin in his hand.

“We can destroy it,” Erso’s daughter says, confident and just as angry as he. “I know of a way to destroy it.” And Bodhi lets that soothe the ragged bits of his soul.

* * *

The winds howl of Eadu, harsh rain pelting the ground around them. It’s soothing, the distant sound of thunder calming his agitated nerves. Bodhi looks up at the night sky, swallowing his own scream of rage and  _listens_.

Time spills out in front of him like it does. Like it had when he’d been trapped in that cell and forced to have everything he was ripped open and laid out in front of a monster. Time moves in front of him, writhing and transforming, weaving and stilling and Bodhi sighs.

_Hi. I...We aren’t supposed to ask who we were before our designation. I learned that now. I just...I don’t even know why I asked?_

"Go back down Bodhi,” the one who’d saved him (Cassian, his mind whispers) orders, stiff and angry. He looks at him, standing closer and closer until there’s nothing between them but a thin sliver of rain.

“Do you want to do this?” And Cassian flinches, jaw clenched tight and eyes wide and furious but tired and guilty underneath. Fire being slowly drenched by harsh snow.

Bodhi wonders if it’d be bad if he pushed the hair sticking out of Cassian’s face to see his eyes better. To see the eyes that shined so brightly no matter how much the other man tried to hide it.

‘Your grief will kill you,’ he wants to say, ‘bury the fire shining in your eyes. Bury them in permafrost and despair and you don’t deserve this. No one does.’

Instead, Bodhi nods and heads back down. The winds howling behind him.

* * *

_Glowing like the Moon, Passionate like the Sun_

Bodhi whispers these words to himself as he listens to the council bicker and fight over what next to do. He wants to scream, hold each of them by the shoulders and shake. He does nothing though, watches in silence as Jyn tries to get them to accept her offer.

“And how do we know if they’re even telling the truth? We’re to take the words of a criminal and imperial pilot?”

“ _Ex_ -imperial,” he says; the word flying out of his mouth before he’d given it too much thought. He stands straight, moving next to Jyn and addressing the room at large. “And this ex-imperial brought this information to you instead of leaving it be. I risked my life, my  _family’s_ lif-” He cuts himself off and swallows.

“NiJedha is gone,” and oh how the words rip into him, a distant wail of a child who’d lost his mother, his sister, his  _home_ , “it’s gone, ripped apart by the very machine you want to denounce. But it’s not like you care right? Jedha’s just an outterrim planet. One that you can exploit or write off whenever you please,” his eyes survey the room, satisfied when no one could look at him, “I will promise you. The next planet they target won’t be one you can write off. They will come. And they won’t take anything less than a surrender.” It’s silent, like it always is. Like Bodhi’s used to. The sort of silence that follows where no one knows how to say much of anything; where no one knows where to go from there.

“What do we do then?” One of them asks.

_Glowing like the Moon, Passionate like the Sun._

Bodhi answers like any Jedhan would; he imagines his mother and father would be proud.

“We fight.”

* * *

He  _sees_  the bomb before it comes.  _Sees_ it enter his ship and rip him apart from the inside out.  _Hears_  his own screams, his pain and the end to his life. He  _sees_ it happen. But that doesn’t stop him from being able to get away from it.

It rolls onto the ship and Bodhi takes a second to look at it and send out a quiet prayer. 

“I’m sorry,” he doesn’t know who he’s saying it to, himself, his family, the people he’s leaving behind, “I’m sorry.”

The bomb explodes and all Bodhi can hear is the blast and a strangled scream.

“Bodhi!”

* * *

He wakes on a field, the grass beneath him soft and cool and the sky above him beautiful and all encompassing. A smile stretches across his face, wide and hysterical; tears cascading down his face without his permission.

Bodhi falls apart in that moment, gives into the emotions that he’d been suppressing all those years, lets himself ride the tidal wave until he’s nothing more than his base emotions. He cries and wails, screams into the abyss and claws himself back up again.

“Took you long enough,” and then he sees her, sees her at the edge of peripheral vision and with a strangled cry Bodhi runs to her, wanting to collapse in their arms and hold them close to his chest.

Something stops him, an invisible barrier set up between the two of them. 

“What’s going on?” His mother smiles at him, sad and small like she always does.

“You’re not done yet,” she says, her hand up (shaking, like it always does) as though to hold him before she remembers herself, “you’re not done yet.” 

And then she disappears from his disbelieving gaze. And he’s left alone. Like always.

Bodhi sinks to the floor and lets out a strangled scream.

* * *

People come and go, never noticing him. Time moves about them in various ways, curing around him and leaving him to his isolation. Silence returns, ever faithful and Bodhi wants nothing more than to close his eyes and never open them again.

“He...Hello?” And he opens them, seeing a  _child_ , barely the age of 7, look up at him with a mixture of fear and hopefulness. They stand a ways away from him, looking both as though they’d want to sit next to him and terrified at the possibility. Bodhi decides to play it by ear.

“Hi,” he whispers, turning his head to the kid fully and trying to smile for as much as he’s worth, “I’m Bodhi.” And the kid smiles up at him, timid and small, but a smile that as bright as any star above them.

“Hi,” the kid says, brown eyes glistening, “I’m FN-2187.” Bodhi smiles, awkward though it feels, but is rewarded with an even bigger smile from the kid.

“What brings you out here?” The kid shrugs and sighs.

“I wanted a friend. I kept asking out for one and then....I got here and found you.” Bodhi struggles to keep his smile in check.

“You really shouldn’t come back here. It’s not really all that safe,” the kid deflates and Bodhi sucks in a deep breath because no way should this kid  _ever_  have eyes as haunted as his own, “but if you ever do. I’ll be here okay?” 

The kid’s smile, Bodhi swears, could rival any sun.

HIs mother had been right, he isn’t done yet. Not when this kid is here and  _dreams._

* * *

The kid comes often and each visit tears something in Bodhi. The scars that wrap around their wrist, the scars that wrap around his back and his legs and his chest, tell a different story than the smile that touches the child’s lips. Still, Bodhi sticks with them, knowing without having to really say anything that the child needed this.

Still, things change.

“His name is  _Poe_ ,” the kid whispers, eyes shimmering like stars and smile widening until it overtakes his face, “his name is  _Poe_.”

“The kid you’re having  _dreams_  about?” At the kid’s nod, Bodhi smiles.

“Do you think?” They pause and swallow, “Do you think he’ll like me?” And Bodhi shakes his head even as his heart squeezes. 

“Of course he will kiddo, what’s not to like.” And the kid treats him to another one of his smiles, soft and shy and warm like any sun.

“I mean it.”

* * *

The visits shorten until they stop altogether and Bodhi wonders if it means he can move on, wonders if it means he can finally let go and  _sleep_.

The kid comes back one day, years later with a smile that lights up the night sky. He walks to him at first before breaking out into a run and engulfing Bodhi in a hug so tight it squeezes the breath out of him.

“Thank you,” the kid whispers into his shoulder and Bodhi smiles and holds him back.

“Thank  _you_ ,” he repeats and the kid (Finn he introduces himself, eyes burning with glee and happiness and hope so bright it  _burns_ ) hugs him even tighter.

“I don’t want to see you back here for a long time alright?” Bodhi says into Finn’s hair and is rewarded with wet laugh and a nod. They seperate, both of them smiling at the other.

“Thank you,” Finn repeats, “for listening.”

“Thank you,” Bodhi replies, “and I’ll always be listening if you need me.” 


End file.
